Although NuclearCrimes.org was often confused as a blog in its time, this former ad-free, anti-nuclear website
posted more than opeds, essays and news bits. Actually, the primary function of this website was to share the work-in-progress written analyses on a wide spectrum of nuclear and radiation topics by the research-activist founder, Andrew Kishner, who is a former library hound. The goal of the site was two-fold: activist engagement and education. To help the visitor better understand the research side of NuclearCrimes.org, browse through the below sections of text, which are parts of this site's webpages having to do with three big nuclear keywords: Kilotons, Half-life, and Curies (a unit of radiation measurement).

Andrew has expanded on some of the topics from his research work on NuclearCrimes.org and produced ebooks after closing this site in 2014. Please visit his website.

On April 25, 1953, at 4:30 am Pacific Standard Time, 'Simon,' a 43-kiloton atomic device at the Nevada Test Site, was detonated 300 feet above-ground. The top part of Simon's mushroom cloud rose to over 40,000 feet and rode the jet stream at first slowly (around 50 mph) through the south-central part of the…

On September 6, 1979, the DOE carried out shot 'Hearts,' a 140-kiloton underground nuclear blast intended to create a shock environment to 'destroy' those two unexploded devices, both located in nearby underground test shafts. 'Hearts' was not intended to explode the devices but rather…

Underground testing was limited - by yield - in 1976 when the Threshold Test Ban Treaty went into effect, which capped nuclear tests by the U.S. and the Soviets at 150 kilotons. It was banned altogether in 1992 - the last NTS nuclear test was on September 23, 1992 - when the U.S. initiated a moratorium on all nuclear testing.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/japan.php

…dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima by an U.S. Army Air Force B-29 (bomber) named 'the Enola Gay.' The bomb exploded before hitting the ground in what is called an air-burst explosion. The estimated yield of the bomb was 15 kilotons (15,000 tons) of TNT-equivalent.

The amount of uranium in Little Boy remains classified but is estimated to have been about 64 kilograms. Because early atom bombs were very inefficient in using up the 'trigger' or 'nuclear fuel' material, only about 1-2% of the uranium fissioned, or around 0.7 kilograms.

On August 9, 1945, a plutonium bomb - dubbed 'Fat Man' - was dropped on Nagasaki by the 'Enola Gay.' The mushroom cloud from the air-burst explosion rose to 60,000 feet. The yield of the nuclear blast was estimated at 21 kilotons. The amount of plutonium in the bomb - which is classified by the U.S. - is estimated to have been between 5 and 15 kilograms. Only about 8 to 24% of the plutonium fissioned.

…Nevada Test Site (where 1,000 nuclear tests were conducted) the air bursts spawned the longest-range fallout. Here is a fallout trajectory map for a nearly identical explosion - as the Nagasaki explosion - over Nevada in the 1950s dubbed shot 'Dog.' 'Shot Dog' was a 21-kiloton air-dropped above-ground nuclear blast at the Nevada Test Site in 1951.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/mightyoak.php

Another theory is that the Mighty Oak test exceeded its expected yield. Since 1986, the DOE has only divulged that Mighty Oak's yield was 'under 20 kilotons' but Greenpeace in 1986 estimated the anticipated yield as 1.3 kilotons. The test likely was higher than 1.3 kilotons.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/NEVADA.php

…January 27, 1951, when a 1-kiloton atom bomb device dubbed 'Able' was dropped by airplane and detonated in mid-air. The mushroom cloud from the open-air blast split into layers that traveled across states and time zones. When a fallout cloud reached Rochester just 36 hours after detonation, a snowstorm in upstate New York 'scavenged' airborne…

The New York Times reported in May 1946 that 'The single bomb exploded in New Mexico contaminated the air over an area as large as Australia.'

…'Operation Dominic II' (or 'Sunbeam'). The latter, a testing series in July 1962, consisted of Little Feller I and II - both surface tests, Johnnie Boy - a crater test, and Small Boy, which was the last tower test at the NTS - it was detonated about 10 feet aboveground. Also in July 1962, 'Shot Sedan,' a 104 kiloton cratering nuclear experiment, spooned out a massive crater (320 feet deep and 1,280 feet across) at the NTS and lofted radioactive fines across the American West.

… Linus Pauling stated that one teaspoon (about 4.2 grams) of Strontium 90 if distributed evenly amongst all people in the world would kill all of the people in the world in a few years. As it turns out, the full yield from a leaked 5-kiloton underground test of Strontium 90 is about 5 grams and if distributed evenly would kill the world's population of 1950 or about one-third of today's world…

The 10-kiloton U.S. underground nuclear explosion in 1970 dubbed Baneberry released 6% of its radioactive load of gaseous and non-gaseous matter, amounting to 6 million Curies,…

…1953…Shot Grable was conducted at the Nevada Test Site. Grable was an atomic cannon test. The 15 kiloton yield nuclear device was shot from a 280mm cannon but only reached one-third of the goal altitude of 1,500 feet, where it created a mushroom cloud topping at 35,000 feet.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/rulison.php

The States of Nevada and Colorado weren't the only states that hosted nuclear tests. New Mexico had two: Gasbuggy (1967), a 29-kiloton nuclear blast intended to stimulate the flow of natural gas from 'tight' formation gas fields, was conducted near Farmington in Rio Arriba County, N.M. Six years earlier, on Dec. 10, 1961, Gnome, a 3-kiloton blast designed to advance scientific and industrial knowledge, was detonated southeast of Carlsbad, N.M. That test accidentally vented a radioactive gas cloud containing Strontium-90 and Cesium-137 that traveled northwards.

Rulison's bomb yield, of 43 kilotons, was three times the yield of the Hiroshima blast, larger than the combined yield of New Mexico Plowshare tests (in 1961 and 1967). Rulison even surpassed the average yield of above-ground tests at the Nevada Test Site from 1951 to 1962. …

a 43-kiloton blast will create radioactive Iodine-131 (approx. 5.4 million Curies), which has by now completely decayed from Rulison, and Strontium-90 (about 15,000 Curies) and Cesium-137 (about 20,000 Curies), which haven't fully decayed.

When will the gas drilling at the Rulison Site be put to rest? The threat to Coloradans from Noble Energy and other gas companies puncturing holes in subterrainean radioactive pockets, …

Project 'Rio Blanco' was a large 'peacetime' nuclear experiment intended to stimulate gas production - it was a 'successor' test to Project Rulison- in the western Colorado gas fields. Conducted on May 17, 1973, in a creek basin on federal lands northwest of Rifle, Colorado, 'Rio Blanco' actually involved three nuclear devices, each with an explosive yield of 33-kilotons and separated from each other vertically by 400-feet at depths ranging from 6,689 to 6,230 to 5,838 feet. The three atom bombs, each more than twice the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945, were exploded simultaneously.…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/subcritical.php

China conducted eleven 4 to 8 kiloton underground nuclear tests from 1990 through the date of their last known nuclear test in July 1996.

The official announcement by India's Ministry of External Affairs on May 13, 1998 of their second set of nuclear-tests (the two sub-kiloton nuclear tests) noted the tests were "carried out to generate additional data for improved computer simulation of designs and for attaining the capability to carry out subcritical experiments, if considered necessary."

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/wsmr.php

The 'official' record has 'Shot Uncle,' detonated in 1951 at the Nevada Test Site, as the first underground nuclear test. It was a small, lightly buried bomb device - 1.2 kilotons at 17 feet underground. According to a government document titled 'U.S. Nuclear Testing from Project Trinity to the Plowshare Program,' (DNA-1986), the motivation for the 'Uncle' underground bomb test originated in 1946…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/1-4.php

Since the blast over Nagasaki was at a higher elevation than Trinity, more of 'Little Boy's' fallout was dispersed into the atmosphere and more of it reached the arctic. The mushroom cloud over Nagasaki rose to 60,000 feet. The Trinity test was conducted close to ground (less than 30 meters).

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/fukushima.php

…to begin to understand why it is astonishing to have a soil sample reading as high as 500,000, consider that one becquerel is defined as one ionization event per second. So, in the kilogram of dust/dirt mentioned in the article above, there will be 500,000 clicks, aka counts, aka disintegrations, per second. Some are rays from alpha particles; and some are betas, and some are gammas. Note that in the course of a minute in a 'normal' place on Earth, owing to natural background radiation, the total disintegrations in air typically amount to less than 100, and usually around 40 or so. A kilogram of soil in a normal place on Earth will have slightly higher levels than that, but not anywhere near 10,000s or 100,000s of becquerels (per kilogram of turf), or tens or hundreds of thousands of disintegrations *per second*. The most radioactive place ever inhabited on Earth, Rongelap Island, was considered unsafe for habitation and the Rongelapese were removed from their radioactive island in the 1980s at the insistence of Greenpeace.

One of the highest cesium values reported since the March 11th earthquake was from a soil sample in Japan taken around March 23, 2011 in Iidate village, 40 km from the Fukushima stricken reactors - that soil was contaminated with cesium 137 levels at 163,000Bq/kg, or 280 to 326 times more radioactive than the 1970s thru 1990s levels on Rongelap Island.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/thermal.php

All but one of these detonations occurred on or above the island. 'Frigate Bird,' a 600-kiloton bomb, exploded over 100 miles off the coast - to the northeast - of Christmas Island. The nuclear device was delivered by a ballistic missile and launched from a submerged submarine located several hundred miles southeast of Maui…

From April to September 1958, the U.S. blew up bombs on Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the Pacific totaling 35,600 kilotons. (The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was just 15 kilotons.) Two of the 1958 tests, dubbed 'Poplar' and 'Elder' - huge hydrogen bomb explosions - comprised 51% of the total yield of nearly three dozen tests conducted that year in the Pacific by the U.S.

Although we know 137 underground tests were conducted at Moruroa, the total fission yield cannot be precisely determined; our estimate is 2,270 kilotons (2.27 MT). Not accounting for radioactive decay, the subsurface areas retained about 75% of the strontium-90 (227,000 curies; about the same as Chernobyl) and cesium-137 (363,200 curies) created by the blasts. Fangataufa's cumulative underground test yield is…

NIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/2009yearreview.php

In early May, Japanese professor Jun Takada suggested that Chinese nuclear tests exposed 1.48 million people to radiation and 190,000 of them may have died from diseases linked to radiation.

On May 25, a CNN correspondent said that 'this Xenon-133 is a very kind of low-grade gas...and it is not dangerous'. I later found out that that was bullshit and that if a North Korean 5 kiloton underground nuclear test leaked all its radio-krypton gases, it would introduce into the environment enough Strontium 90 that if distributed evenly would kill off about one-third of today's world population.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/4-5.php

Radioactive debris from NTS tests created 'hotspots' in dozens of places across the globe such as upstate New York.
On April 25, 1953, at 4:30 am Pacific Standard Time, 'Simon,' a 43-kiloton atomic device at the Nevada Test Site, was detonated 300 feet above-ground. The top part of Simon's mushroom cloud rose to over 40,000 feet and rode the jet stream at first slowly (around 50 mph) through the south-central part of the…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/a-14-2.php

Over the next 33 years, through 1991, U.K. scientists collaborated with their American nuclear counterparts on 24 nuclear experiments at a large test site in Nevada - the Nevada Test Site - starting with 'Pampas,' a 9.5 kiloton underground test on March 1, 1962. Inclusive of these two dozen experiments were open-air atomic detonations, numerous underground nuclear blasts (through 1991) and four Vixens-style open-air plutonium dispersal experiments (Operation 'Roller Coaster')…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/area13.php

Project 57, a 1957 safety test conducted in 'Area 13,' involved a real warhead that was estimated to have released about 250 Curies of Pu239 - the amount a warhead associated with a 1.5 kiloton yield would contain.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/holdthescary.php

[BP blowout oil gusher] …a former Russian Minister of nuclear energy says it'll only take 10 kilotons to shut the well and cost no more than 10 million greenbacks whereas Milo Nordyke, a former director of the U.S.'s Project Plowshare, thinks it will take 30 kilotons. Reuters presented the views of various dissenters of the nuke-the-gusher idea including Andy Radford with the American Petroleum Institute who said that any blast could fracture the seabed and cause an underground blowout. Another dissenter, Vladimir Chuprov from Greenpeace Moscow, must be thankful that freedom of speech is a core value now in Russia; he said: "What was praised as a success and a breakthrough by the Soviet Union is in essence a lie. I would recommend that the international community not listen to the Russians. Especially those of them that offer crazy ideas. Russians are keen on offering things, especially insane things."

As we entered the lobby of the museum, I spotted the adjacent curio shop. "Do you want to see what they offer as souvenir of the exhibit?," my companion asked. "Sure," I thought, "why not visit the 'bombs or bust' gift shop?" There were shelves of T-shirts—each shirt pictured a different atomic bomb and the date/kilotons of the respective detonation, i.e. Shot Annie, May 1953, Shot Harry, etc. The attendant came over to assist. "Are you looking for a particular bomb?," he asked. "Oh," I said, "there are so many to choose from; I don't know whether to get the one that claimed my right ovary, or wear a picture of the one more likely to have taken my breast and legs." (The shirts sported glow-in-the-dark emblems that represented the symbols denoting designated bomb shelters: you know, the yellow and black triangles?) The salesperson brought me his personal favorite bestseller. "We have these "shot' glasses you might like. They come with the recipe for the Atomic Cocktail." (A popular 50's drink served in Las Vegas lounges during the testing years.) "No, thank you," I said. "I went through a year of atomic cocktails. I didn't drink them, though, I swilled 'em down intravenously at the local cancer infusion clinic. They were pretty stiff: knocked my hair right out. The attendant seemed confused. I picked up a set of playing cards. What trip to Las Vegas would be complete without a deck of souvenir cards? And these, well, these were so distinct. Fifty-two cards capturing 52 atomic blasts. "Geez," I said, "I sure wish I'd been a member of your marketing team on this item. I'd have included a deck of 52 fallout-related disease and cancers pictured. Oh, and the jokers could be the congressmen who want to see the resumption of nuclear testing!"

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/22/022.htm

The implications of Miller's work, contained in his five volume atlas, are huge. If a link exists between some of the radionuclides and certain types of cancers, physicians across the country could use that information as an important diagnostic tool. They could ask patients where they grew up and where they've lived. If a patient lived in an area that got hit with high levels of Cobalt 60, for instance, a physician might want to consider looking at female colon cancer, which seems to be highly correlated with Cobalt 60 deposits.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/nokonuketest.php

At his Nobel Prize lecture in 1963, Linus Pauling asserted that Carbon-14, which is created in large quantities - on the order of about 16 pounds per megaton - in nuclear blasts, poses a greater risk than all gaseous and non-gaseous fission (and fusion) products.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/thermal.php

Dr. Bertell also said that a former Fijian naval officer who witnessed one of the Pacific-based megaton blasts conducted in the early 1960s told her that he believed the blasts were 'capable of affecting the earth 's rotation, slowing it slightly.' The impact on Earth's rotation from Pacific megaton blasts may also have occurred indirectly, via powerful storms. Indeed, a United Press International article published on December 18, 1983 reported that a major climatic disturbance that spawned powerful Pacific storms in the year 1983 had slowed the earth's rotation,…

…recent National Academy of Sciences study stated that in the event of a nuclear war, the nitric oxide produced by the weapons explosions from 10,000 megatons could reduce the ozone levels in the northern hemisphere by as much as 30 to 70 percent. The Cold War, a 'nuclear war' that actually occurred and entailed 440 megatons of open-air explosions, must have resulted in 1 to 3 percent reduction in the ozone. Estimates have run as as 6% (damage to the ozone from nuclear testing). Huge gaping holes in the ozone from 1961 to 1964, which were later filled in by ebb and flow…

…south-southeast of Moruroa, Fangataufa was used from 1966 to 1996 as the site of underground and aboveground bomb tests. Fangataufa endured 14 atmospheric tests including the 2.6 megaton hydrogen bomb test 'Canopus' (1968). (The 'Tamoure' test of 1966 took place adjacent to the atoll).

The U.S.'s 66 atmospheric nuclear tests at Enewetak Atoll (43) and Bikini Atoll (23) generated 108 megatons of yield, or about 80% of the total yield from all U.S. aboveground testing. Actually Rosalli Bertell estimated that the U.S.'s total contribution of radioactive pollution to the globe through 1962 was about 140 megatons (in weight) of fission and fusion products, working out to about 6.8 million Curies of Strontium-90 (Sr90). (Soviet Union's contribution through 1962 was about 346 megatons.)

Considering that Chernobyl generated 216,000 Curies of Sr90, then U.S. 'Marshalls' testing created about 31 times Chernobyl's contribution of Sr90 to global background levels. (UNSCEAR 2001 notes that about 16.8 million curies of strontium-90 were produced atmospheric nuclear blasts from 1946 to 1958, most of them thermonuclear (hydrogen) including 'Shot Bravo,' one of the largest nuclear tests ever on Earth, conducted on March 1, 1954. That day, beginning about four or five hours after the 15-megaton Bravo test was detonated, Rongelap Island was showered in fallout. (The northern parts of Rongelap Atoll received the greatest brunt of the immediate fallout from Bravo…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/3-1.php

Soviets began readying their test sites to start a large-scale bomb testing series in September 1961. That testing series, which lasted through November 1961, featured the biggest 'superbomb' ever tested on Earth - a 58-megaton device dubbed 'Tsar Bomba' (over 3,000 times the firepower of the device that leveled Hiroshima in 1945).

A 1991 IPPNW report gives the total global atmospheric fission yield as 217.2 megatons whereas UNSCEAR 2000 gives 189 megatons. The difference lies in the assumptions of how much was the actual yield of many Soviet and U.S. blasts - most yields are still classified and many yields are not exactly known. Also, it is sometimes hard to calculate how much fission derives from fusion yields, especially if…

…were conducted at the NTS beneath the ground. More than 80 underground nuclear tests were conducted in a northwestern part of the NTS called the 'Pahute Mesa,' volcanic highlands with peaks topping 7,000 feet in elevation. Pahute Mesa was also home to three megaton-range nuclear tests.… One 1968 hydrogen bomb test called 'Benham' had a yield of 1.15 megatons; it was a scaled-down version of the 'Spartan' H-bomb.

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The biggest of them all was 'Cannikin.' Conducted on 11/6/1971, Cannikin was a mistake from the get-go. The mile-deep shaft for the 5-megaton blast (the largest ever underground explosion by the U.S.) was actually drilled too shallow - about 1,000 feet too shallow. Just two days after Cannikin rocked the earth and burst eyeballs of countless sea mammals from undersea shock waves,…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/6-1.php

'Bravo' - On March 1, 1954, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission detonated a nuclear bomb device on Namu Island on Bikini Atoll. Its yield, 15 megatons, was 1,000 times the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The massive 'Bravo' experiment was a test of a new type of weapon, the hydrogen bomb, which was first unveiled to the world in a test (by the U.S.) in October 1952; it was called 'Ivy-Mike'. 'Bravo' was the first 'deliverable' H-bomb tested by the U.S. It also turned out to be the largest nuclear device ever tested by the U.S.

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Practically all of the Marshallese received some degree of radiation exposure from Bravo and/or any of the more than 60 other nuclear devices detonated on Enewetak and Bikini. …That radioactive debris from the RMI included as much as 57 times the amount of iodine-131 released at the Nevada Test Site and 31 times Chernobyl's contribution of strontium-90 to the environment! A very large amount of strontium-90 entered the stratosphere, where it became part of the phenomenon of global fallout. …Considering how the U.S. permanently tainted the soils of its own Mountain and Plains States with radiocesiums, radiostrontiums and plutonium from a total of 1 megaton of blasts at the Nevada Test Site, it would be foolish to think that over 100 times that amount of nuclear blasting at the Marshall Islands didn't create lethal hotspots, zones of contamination rivaling no-go areas of Chernobyl and Fukushima and significant cancer and genetic damage on the population, not to mention a permanently tainted food supply. Tony A. Debrum, Minister of Finance for the Republic of the Marshall Islands, stated before the U.S.…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/a1hane.php

The worst was 'Starfish Prime,' conducted on July 9, 1962, at 399 kilometers (248 miles) above Earth. The hydrogen bomb detonation at a distance slightly further out into space than the present-day International Space Station was pegged at 1.4 megatons, or about 100 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. Starfish Prime was one in a series of five tests of Operation Fishbowl and, similar to the Argus experiment, created an envelope of charged (beta) particles that stayed trapped in Earth's…
Starfish Prime's total yield was 1.45 megatons, and about 50% was fission yield.

CURIES

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/1-1.php

About 98% of the radioactive material fell according to a 1977 DOE map, contain plutonium concentrations over 80 nanoCuries per cubic meter of soil, or at least five times expected 'background' levels, which are 15.93 nanoCuries per cubic meter of soil. (Expected global fallout plutonium levels are 5.93 megaBequerels per cubic centimeters. Multiply this by 27 to get picoCuries, we get 159.3 picoCuries per cubic centimeters. To convert to units of cubic meters, we divide this by 10,000, to get 0.01593 picoCuries per cubic meter. To convert to nanocuries, we multiply this by 1,000 to get 15.93 nanocuries per cubic meter.)

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/1-4.php

The amount of plutonium scattered to the winds from the Nagasaki blast, calculated at about 380 Curies, was about 150% the size of the biggest U.S. 'plutonium dispersal experiment' dubbed 'Project 57.'...the Nagasaki fallout, containing about 345 Curies (a measure of radioactivity) of plutonium, must have inflicted biological damage wherever it ended up.

A 1 mCi/km2 value is the same as 37 Bq/m2. 16.72 mCi/km2 is the same as 618.64 Bq/m2.

Expected global fallout plutonium levels are 5.93 megaBequerels per cubic centimeters. Multiply this by 27 to get picoCuries, we get 159.3 picoCuries per cubic centimeters. To convert to units of cubic meters, we divide this by 10,000, to get 0.01593 picoCuries per cubic meter. To convert to nanocuries, we multiply this by 1,000 to get 15.93 nanocuries per cubic meter.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/1-5.php

...that were deposited in Iraq in aerosolized form, we convert this into units of picoCuries (or trillionths of a Curie, which is a measure of radioactivity) via the following:

1 Curie of Uranium-238 (U-238) weighs 3,000,000 grams*

So, 1 million lbs of U-238 equals 151 Curies, or 151,000,000,000 picoCuries.
1 out of every 2,000,000 particles is inhaled (and the rest falls to the ground), then this number of picoCuries inhaled in the lungs of humans can be reduced to about 75,000 picoCuries(pCi). The EPA gives a 'slope factor' for extra cancer risks from inhalation of Uranium-238 as 0.00000000935/picoCuries/year. To make sense of this, we multiply the quantity of inhaled particles - 75,000. If 4 million pounds, or 1,812,000,000 grams, of DU dust has exploded over Iraq, then 2,152,656,000 picoCuries of plutonium 239 were also present in the dust. Dividing this by 2,000,000 - assuming only 1 of every 2 million DU dust...

*Technically, 1 Curie of U238 weighs 2,975,000 grams

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/2-9.php

...how many atoms of strontium-90 are in your bones? 1 mole of Sr90 weighs 90 grams. 1 curie of Sr90 weighs 7 grams. The average human adult skeleton has 1,428 picocuries of Sr90. This is 1.428E-09 Curies or 9.996E-09 grams of Sr90. To determine the number of atoms of Sr90 in our...

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/3-3.php

...foodstuffs began quickly dropping. In the early 1960s, the diet of the average American peaked at about 40 "picocuries" (a unit of radiation)9 of strontium-90 per day. This 'dietary intake' fell to 30 picocuries in 1964 to about 17 picocuries in 1967-68. It has since leveled out at about 5 to 10 picocuries daily - through the present.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/3-4.php

What is a picoCurie? Pico means one part per trillion of some quantity; a Curie is a measure of radioactivity. When discussing strontium-90, we use the picocurie to express the the amount of radiation in a mass of something. With foods, we will say that there are 20 picocuries per kilogram of wheat or 10 picocuries per liter of milk. We also use the picocurie to express the amount of strontium-90 in relation to a mass of calcium. This is usually done when referring to bone or teeth concentrations of strontium-90. (Although it is sometimes used also for food.) For instance, we would say that a child has a concentration of strontium-90 in teeth of 5 picocuries per gram of calcium; that means for every gram of calcium, on average, in that child's teeth and bones, there are 5 picocuries of strontium. Since children and adults, respectively, have about the same amounts of calcium as one another per age group in their skeleton/teeth, then we can easily refer to the pCi/g Ca (picoCurie per gram of Calcium) number to ascertain that one child (or population group) has more strontium-90 in their bones than another.

This analysis uses the 'Strontium Unit' term to refer to strontium-90 levels in milk, food and teeth, however now you know that we are talking about picocuries per Liter (milk), picocuries per kilogram (food) and picocuries per gram of calcium (teeth).

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/3-5.php

...using units of radioactivity, like the Becquerel or Curie, which are scientific units named after the earliest atomic scientists, Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel.

Also, parts of American West (central NV, UT, WY and Dakotas) received additional 15% higher (about 50 or 60 extra millicuries/mile2) deposits of Sr90 than global 'background levels' due to NTS atmospheric testing of 1.1 MT, which released 110,000 Curies of Sr90. Extremely overlooked is the fact that NTS fallout of Sr90 comprised just 1.5% of total Sr90 fallout by all U.S. open-air testing....One million curies is the same as one megacurie, or denoted as MCi.

All nuclear testing (above- and below-ground) pumped a total of about 27 million curies of strontium into the environment.

Since we know that something between 16 and 19 million curies of Sr90 were 'created,' most of which fell over the Northern Hemisphere, then decay has reduced the original 'creation' amount to about 7 million curies of Sr90 by year 2000.

NTS fallout added an average of 15 milliCuries per square mile over nearly half of the West; less than… In April 1963, average strontium-90 levels in milk nationwide were about 18 picoCuries per Liter, a new maximum, but Del Norte County received over ten times that amount (180 pCi/L) and one milk…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/4-1.php

In all, some 250,000 curies of radioactive lathanum were released into the environment during the testing period.3 ... cobalt-60, which is a gamma emitter nearly as strong as lathanthum-140. A quantity of 40,000 curies of cobalt-60, upon close contact, would deliver a fatal dose in a less than 60 seconds.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/4-3.php

EDI noted that 'DOEs own previous Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) state the ATR released 1,802 curies in 2000 and 1,180 curies in 2003 to the atmosphere. On average that is about 1,491 curies/year; so over a nine year period 2000 through 2011 about 16,401 curies are released to the air. These high emissions from ATR suggest liquid waste is first sent to the ATR cooling towers w/o treatment and the precipitates are then pumped to INTEC evaporators or the percolation ponds. This represents a significant hazard to INL workers and the downwind public.' (p.12) They add that '...ATR waste processing...is in violation [of the Clean Air Act] for not fully permitting the high-level waste evaporators that generate significant air emissions...In 2003...atmospheric emissions... [of the Reactor Technology Complex (RTC)]/ATR were 1,180 curies. In 2000, the RTC/ATR released 1,802.69 curies. Included are 0.39 curies of iodines; 2.3 curies of mixed fission products. '(p.70) If you're wondering what 'mixed fission products' means, so does EDI. ...[An] accident at ATR, owing to 'degraded plant condition, poor conduct of operations, and safety basis deficiencies' could release over one hundred million curies of radiation from the core and possibly cause volatilization via cladding fires of some or all of the 600-700 fuel assemblies which...

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/4-4.php

... In what has become known as the 'Green Run,' Hanford scientists, in 1949, intentionally released tens of thousands of Curies of radioactive Iodine-131....

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...atmospheric testing at the NTS had released 12 billion curies, or the same amount of radiation as at least 50 Chernobyls. The 100 atmospheric tests held at the NTS released 150 million curies of Iodine-131 and about 140,000 curies of Strontium-90. Few people know that the amount of strontium-90 injected into the atmosphere from NTS testing was a mere 1.5% of the amount spewed from all open-air testing....

24 250 Ci is the amount a warhead associated with a 1.5 kiloton yield would contain. [One Curie of Pu239 is about 16 grams].

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/6-3.php

14 Iodine-131 released from Marshall Islands tested was originally estimated by the U.S. CDC to equal 6.3 billion Curies...read the contents of an email/letter from a NCI scientist [U.S. National Cancer Institute's Steven L. Simon, PhD.] that stated a better estimate was "...between 7.9 and 8.5 billion curies. Thus, the release of I-131 in the Marshalls was closer to 53 times (or as high as 57 times) greater than that released at the NTS rather than 42 times as stated."

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/6-7.php

The late radiobiology expert John Gofman, in his book "Radiation and Human Health," argued that 950,000 global fatal lung-cancers will result from Earthlings' exposure to plutonium dust (through the early 1970s) from global nuclear testing fallout. The Curiosity payload - in 'Curies' - represents about one-fifth of the radioactivity of the plutonium isotopes estimated to have been in the global fallout. If NASA's mission failed, would we have faced nearly 200,000 fatal lung cancers from a worst-case re-entry?

Since Gofman's calculations pertained to a global population that was roughly 50% of ours (there are twice as many pairs of lungs now as then), perhaps that number would've been nearly 400,000 fatal lung cancers.

...with a RTG onboard (SNAP-9A), failed to enter orbit and broke up during re-entry into Earth's upper atmosphere. The satellite and its load of plutonium-238, estimated at 2.1 pounds or 17 kilocuries, both disintegrated, and the plutonium-238 - in the form of small particles - became virtually 'stuck' in the upper stratosphere...

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/7-2.php

...Cosmos 954's reactor was thought to have contained around 500,000 Curies of Uranium and various fission products (500,000 Curies is the estimated amount of Iodine-131 released to the air from the Hanford facility)

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/7-3.php

Another way to express DOE ALI: if 1 gram of Pu238 emits 17 Curies, and DOE ALI of 5,000 mRem/yr equates with 20,000 picoCuries (pCi)/yr, then only 1.176 nanograms of Pu238 in one year would exceed DOE worker exposure;... 'sizeable quantities of radioactive debris' littered from Cosmos 954 over Canada's environment; about 83 Curies of Strontium-90 fell near Great Slave Lake over an area of 160,000 square meters...

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/7-4.php

Cosmos 1402 're-entry footprint' map [thought to have released 1,000's or 10,000's of Curies)

A femtocurie is a quadrillionth, or thousand trillionth, of a curie.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/7-5.php

At Dugway, one series of late 1950s experiments involved the deliberate meltdown of small nuclear reactors....Scientists burned portions of nuclear fuel in high-temperature furnaces, which were injected with blasts of outside air... The experiment was not contained and the contaminants dispersed into the wind. Eight such meltdowns occurred between August and October 1959 that released an estimated 215 curies of radioactive chemicals including barium 140, cesium 141, strontium 89,...

Radioactivity 1.5 miles west of Lathrop Wells (near the SW border of NTS) was 860,000 picocurie-seconds per cubic meter, equal to a total thyroid dose of 3 milliRads. ...1995 DOE report mentioned that all rocket and ramjet engine tests at the NTS released about 834,000 Curies into the environment. The 'dirtiest' of the nuclear rocket tests at the NTS NRDS were Phoebus 1-B 'Experiment 4' (2.23.67) and 'Pewee Experiment 3' (12.04.68), which each released over 1 million curies, as measured at two hours after the tests. Pewee's cloud dispersed as it traveled ESE towards the northern half of Arizona, where 'positive measurements' by aircraft were made. 1,100 curies of Iodine-131 were released from Pewee EP-3 along with a suite of other radionuclides.... Phoebus 1-B EP-4's cloud - containing 4,100 curies of Iodine-131 and other isotopes - was tracked to Dubois,...

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/8-2.php

the day after EPA pulled out its special monitors, Boise (Idaho) had the highest airborne radioactivity in the nation, of 2.12 picocuries of beta (radiation) per cubic meter...

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/8-3.php

EPA left Nevada on May 10 also saying that that levels of Krypton-85 gas were at normal 'background levels'. [A] 1996 DOE report claims 4.3 curies of Krypton-85 gas was released.

The official story by the DOE, cited in the Energy Department report 'DOE/NV-317,' is that is that Mighty Oak purging released 36,000 curies of xenon-133 along with 2.4 curies of Iodine-131. This means - if we took the official story as gospel - that the DOE filtered all but 2.4 curies of the nearly 18,000 curies of Iodine-131 that would have been created and lingered at stable levels for about three months in the tunnel from Mighty Oak. (18,000 curies of Iodine-131 is the result of a 3 percent fission yield in a 1-2 kiloton nuclear explosion.) Around 250 Curies of Iodine-131 escaped from the Three Mile Island event in 1979.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/10-3.php

...radioactive gases in a 5-kiloton (kt) blast will decline from about 2,500 million Curies at 1 hour (post-explosion), to about 500 million Curies after 4 hours, and about 500,000 Curies after 60 days. If we narrow the scope to just Xenon and Krypton gases, then the radioactive will decline from 200 million Curies at 1 hour, to 50 million Curies at 4 hours, 2.5 million Curies at 2 days, and 150,000 Curies at 20 days... In one hour, the amount of radioactive gases (not including Iodine) from a 5-kiloton blast in one hour would be 4-15 times* higher than the emissions from the Three Mile Island accident. (*Dr. Karl Morgan gave a high estimate of 45 million Curies in leaked gases for Three Mile Island.)

...that Millstone Unit 1 nuclear plant in CT released 2.97 million Curies of radioactive gases, which was an extraordinarily large release for one year.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/10-6.php

In 1974, the total airborne radioactive releases from all U.S. reactors was about 6.5 million Curies. Yet, in 1975, Millstone's Unit 1 released about 3 million airborne curies of 'Fission Activation Gases' containing thirteen 'species' of radio-krypton and -xenon gases. That was half of the national nuclear power total. It was also about one-quarter of the gaseous release of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident...

...eventually pools into a person's thyroid where cancer may be induced. In 1975 Millstone released 9.79 Curies of Iodine-131 and 17.2 Curies of Tritium.

At the beginning of April 2010, cesium concentrations were found up to 10,260 picoCuries per gram, about 60,000 to 100,000 times normal 'background levels.' (Jeff Hardy, chemistry manager for Entergy Nuclear, told the Rutland Herald that the 'background level of cesium-137 at the Vermont Yankee site' was 0.15 picoCuries per gram. William Irwin, radiological health chief for the Department of Health, told the Herald that background levels in Vermont for Cesium-137 'from Chernobyl and weapons testing ranged from' 0.1 to 0.15 picocuries per gram.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/10-7.php

To measure radioactive toxicity we will use the term 'Curie.' (The specific activity is based on radioactive radium: radium has a specific activity of 1 Curie per gram.)

Sr89's specific activity is 28,200 times the same activity of a gram of radium, or 28,200 Curies/gram. Strontium-90 has a specific activity of 141 Curies/gram. That's a difference of 200. So, if one part of Sr89 was created for every part Sr90 created, the Sr89 would be 200 times event, we can usually expect 166 parts of strontium-89 per 1 part of strontium-90 in terms of radioactivity (becquerels or curies).

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/11-2.php

...nuclear reactors are responsible for rising infant teeth concentrations of strontium-90 by an average 1 picoCurie (per gram of calcium) in many 'nuclear counties,'…

…then reactors are emitting more than just a few million picocuries (microcuries) of strontium-90 into the air annually and far, far beyond reported levels…

(The EPA sets the MCL, or maximum 'action' level, for strontium-90 in drinking water at 8 picocuries per liter.)

…of nuclear reactor airborne effluents show that typical annual releases of strontium-90 are in the single digit microCuries (millionths of a Curie), which seems suspiciously low - ...

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/11-3.php

…The estimated inventory of two dangerous radiotoxins in the spent fuel stored at just one U.S. nuclear reactor (according to one recently published book based on a DOE 1996 classified report that was based on 1991 data) is 1,950,000 curies of radiocesium and 70,800 curies of plutonium.

The 1992 cumulative inventory of the biologically significant beta-emitting isotope Cesium 137 is 1.75E+09 or 1,750,000,000 curies for all U.S. light water reactors. Dividing this number by 100 gives a conservative cumulative inventory of 17,500,000 Ci. of radiocesium in the spent fuel of one U.S. nuclear reactor....The 1992 cumulative inventory of Plutonium 239 in all light water reactors (LWR) was 7.08E+06 or 7,080,000 curies. To estimate the inventory in one reactor, divide this figure by 100, which would...

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/11-7.php

Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) suffered a partial meltdown in March 1979. The official story - per the Kemeny Commision - is that 13 to 17 curies of iodine-131 were released and a high estimate of 13 million curies of noble gases - primarily xenons - were also released in the month following the TMI-2 accident… The authors failed to mention the dimensions relating to this value (i.e., per cubic meter or per hour). If the denominator unit was 'cubic meter,' then that would be roughly 1.1 million picocuries of particulates per cubic meter on April 3 (or April 2-3). The authors note that 90% of the radiation detectors surrounding TMI were recording beta radiation (relative to sum of gamma+beta), so we can expect around 1 million picocuries per cubic meter (pCi/m3) of gross beta were being released. These particulates would have impacted areas nearer to the plant than the particulates U.S. varied from, on average, less than 1 to just above 20 pCi/m3 of gross beta. Airborne hotspots soared at times to over 500 pCi/m3 of gross beta. Air filled with 1 million picocuries of gross beta per cubic meter of particulates is probably something that only occurs in the air immediately downwind of reactor meltdowns and nuclear explosions…'

Milk produced at the Hardison Farm north of the plant measured 110 picocuries of iodine per liter on April 25, 1979. Adjusting for decay, in early April the milk may have been 10 times more radioactive; the radiostrontium values aren't known. This is per 'Secret Fallout: Low-Level Radiation from Hiroshima to Three Mile Island,' …

Sr89's specific activity is 28,200 times the same activity of a gram of radium, or 28,200 Curies/gram. Strontium-90 has a specific activity of 141 Curies/gram. That's a difference of 200. So, if one part of Sr89 was created for every part Sr90 created, the Sr89 would be 200 times event, we can usually expect 166 parts of strontium-89 per 1 part of strontium-90 in terms of radioactivity (becquerels or curies).

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/12-6.php

A Sr-90 source term of about 4.6 million curies is equivalent to that produced by a 46-megaton nuclear bomb.

The low-end estimate of strontium-90 released into the atmosphere from open-air nuclear testing during the Cold War was 19 million curies

Chernobyl's source term was about 216 million curies of strontium-90, or roughly 8 x 1018 becquerels of strontium-90

(UTAH) July 1962 milk contamination in 'designated areas' ranged from 20 to 500+ picocuries of iodine-131 per liter by monthly average

Of the 21 counties in Utah, Arizona and Nevada covered by RECA, two counties in July 1962 had around 20 picocuries of iodine-131 per liter of milk

A picocurie (or trillionth of a curie) is also written as pci or, as in the accompanying map, uuc.

Maximum detected strontium-89 in Namie or Iitate's soil in March 2011: 260 becquerels/kilogram = 7.02 picocuries of Sr89 per gram of soil

Maximum detected strontium-90 in Namie or Iitate's soil in March 2011: 32 becquerels/kilogram = 0.8 picocuries of Sr90 per gram of soil

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/15-1.php

…during three separate 1962 underground nuclear detonations at the Nevada Test Site (Des Moines, Eel and Platte tests); each test accidentally breached the surface and released significant amounts (millions of curies) of radiation into the atmosphere.

...environment during Rulison's flaring: 'Radioactivity showed up in three separate flaring tests, which burned gas at the well head. The total radioactivity released included 1,064 curies of Krypton-85, 2,824 curies of radioactive hydrogen-3 (tritium), and 2.4 curies of carbon-14.'2

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/15-2.php

The original tritium yield of Rulison was about 10,000 Curies and the amount that was released during flaring consisted of about 3,000 Curies, leaving 7,000 Curies behind. ....Tritium has a half-life of 12.3 years, which means by 2013 less than 1/8th of the original portion of the tritium remained. The DOE said in late 2009 that the estimated tritium total at the Rulison Site was about 700 Curies (some of this tritium is in the form tritiated water, either in vapor or liquid form, and radioactive tritiated methane). Seven hundred curies is the average amount of tritium that a typical nuclear reactor in the U.S. in 2003 leaked (as liquid effluent)... We can expect that Rulison's 43-kiloton atomic detonation created about 15,000 Curies of strontium-90 and 20,000 Curies of cesium-137 and probably around 40% of the original quantities remains…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/ 15-5.php

The estimate of radioactive Argon-39 gas created by Rulison's blast in 1969 (Ar-39 has a half-life of 260 years) was 2 to 20 Curies; the DOE doesn't know how much was flared, or is still in the ground.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/16-2.php

…there is a condition that must be met for even the most basic isotopic analysis - only if the gross beta reading measurement of a filter registers over 1 picoCurie per cubic meter of air *at the lab* will the analysis be conducted. ...and there will be no knowledge of its occurrence. Why? Because when the filters get sent to NAREL, the 'trigger' level for analyzing the filters is 1 picocurie per cubic meter of beta; and plutonium analyses are conducted about once a year, and for specific radionuclides unless the filter shows gross beta activity greater than 1 picocurie per meter cubed (pCi/m3)... .

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/a-1-2.php

...Los Alamos scientists at the time, with their various radiological dispersal experiments (Trinity, 100-ton test, etc...), surely they didn't care so deeply about a few hundred 'curies' of radioactive polonium and other short-lived radioactive materials being lofted into the air. Plowshare Program,' (DNA-1986)…

The September 1946 experiment involved a "small quantity of high explosive to combine 500 curies of polonium-210 with a light element to generate neutrons." Radiological dispersal of an initiator test would be a health threat if held outdoors: a series of five initiator tests in the 'outback' in 1953 by the British scientists dispersed short-lived radioisotopes and a total of 407 Curies of polonium-210 into the environment.

...that were deposited in Iraq in aerosolized form, we convert this into units of picoCuries (or trillionths of a Curie, which is a measure of radioactivity) via the following:

1 out of every 2,000,000 particles is inhaled (and the rest falls to the ground), then this number of picoCuries inhaled in the lungs of humans can be reduced to about 75,000 picoCuries(pCi). The EPA gives a 'slope factor' for extra cancer risks from inhalation of Uranium-238 as 0.00000000935/picoCuries/year. To make sense of this, we multiply the quantity of inhaled particles - 75,000 If 4 million pounds, or 1,812,000,000 grams, of DU dust has exploded over Iraq, then 2,152,656,000 picoCuries of plutonium 239 were also present in the dust. Dividing this by 2,000,000 - assuming only 1 of every 2 million DU dust…

*Technically, 1 Curie of U238 weighs 2,975,000 grams.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/a-12-2.php

…in Becquerels per meter squared, a common measure of deposition density. Multiply each Becquerel unit by 27 to convert to PicoCuries (or 2,700 to get pCi/m2).

It turns out this dose was an internal dose and calculated based on a collected air sample at the Yokosuka pier that measured 1,600 picocuries (pCi) per liter (L) of iodine-131 (the transcript describes the measurements as '1.6 10-6 microcuries per milliliter'); because there are 1,000 liters in a cubic meter of air, this is the same as 1,600,000 pCi/m3 of iodine-131. The transcript states this measurement is equivalent to a 1.5 millirems per hour dose to the thyroid, however this value is off by 3 orders of magnitude (or 1,000). According to published dose tables in a 1970s NRC document (NUREG 1.109 rev. 1 Oct. '77), the hourly adult dose from inhaling 1 picoCurie (pCi) of iodine-131 is 0.0149 millirems. An adult breathes about 15 cubic meters a day, and accordingly breathes 0.625 cubic meters per hour. So we multiply this (0.625) by the picocuries (of I-131) present in a full cubic meter of air breathed south of Tokyo on 3/15/11 (1600000 pCi/m3) and also by the NRC dose (0.00149 mRem/pCi), which gives us 1,490 millirems or 1.49 Rems per hour. This is 1,000 times...

(after 18 samples) on Rongelap had plutonium-239 levels of 0.07 to 3.2 picoCuries per gram (in dry soil) in the top 40 centimeters.

…average of 20 grams of calcium per square foot down to 2.5 inches (or 6.4 cm), then the concentration of Sr90 in soil in picocuries per gram of calcium on Rongelap would be 1,225 pCi (Sr90/g of Ca). If every picocurie of Sr90 per gram of calcium in soil is equal to 0.55 millicurie of Sr90 per square mile, then Rongelap has an adjusted average of about 2,200 millicuries of Sr90 per square mile , which is over 20 times current Sr90-in-soil levels in the U.S. and Europe.)

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/a-6-5.php

Another way to interpret Sr90 body burden is the total number of picoCuries of Strontium-90 lodged in the body (skeleton); this is determined by multiplying the bone concentration (in Marshallese woman had a Sr90 body burden (1962) was estimated at 11.4 nanoCuries, or 11,400 picoCuries, which was the number of picoCuries of Sr90 in her body. These values are some of the highest...

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/a-6-7.php

In Kohn's report, using 1978 LLNL sampling data, he estimates that '28.1 pCi/d [picocuries per day] based on field samples plus a 25% increment for other miscellaneous foods' would yield a total exposure of 27.3 pCi/d. If we assume that 1/2 of the strontium-90 has decayed, then then daily intake would be about 13 picoCuries per day of Sr90 although this appears to a very conservative estimate. In 1956, the AEC noted that the daily...

One of the first findings: a 1957 Brookhaven study published in June 1958 showed concentrations of Sr90 in bones of the deceased of 1.6 disintegrations/minute/gram of ash; this is equal to 0.72 picoCurie per gram.

With a half-life of 78 hours (3.2 days), tellurium-132, a beta and gamma emitter, decays into iodine-132 gas, which itself has a half-life of a few hours. Tellurium-132 emits gamma energies at 53 and 232 Kev.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/fuku6.php

This applies to even 1, 5, 10 and 20-second half-life radioactive gases, which we almost never see downwind of reactors - these are released upon each 're-criticality' event.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/fukudaily.php

…the levels of RaLa in central Honshu's air are decreasing, the situation on the ground is a different story. RaLa is the decay product of Barium-140, which with a half-life of 12.8 days will linger in soil and water supplies across Honshu for a good part of half a year. Thus, due to the decay of barium-140, RaLa will surface continually in all environments affected by the Fukushima plumes through…

Although experts in the Ministry aren't sure if the Pu-239/240 levels in Minamisoma (~25 km from Fukushima Daiichi) were from Fukushima or global fallout, they do believe that plutonium-238 - which is extremely genotoxic, has a half-life of 88 years and readily binds with oxygen to form plutonium-oxide (pu238o2) - found at six locations is indeed from Fukushima…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/globalfallout.php

Our mountain ranges and agricultural low-lying areas are still radioactive because of the long 'half-life' of strontium-90 - of 28 years. This means that every 28 years any quantity (large or small) of strontium-90 will decay by half into a different chemical that is safe and non-radioactive (zirconium),…

Although yttrium-90 has a half-life of just 64 hours - it decays to safe levels in about 30 days - there is a constant supply of fresh Yttrium-90 from the decay of strontium-90 in our bones…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/NEVADA.php

Miller notes the radioactive element found by lab analysis was cerium-141, which changed the naturally occurring cerium-140 in soil by neutron activation into a 32-day half-life emitter of beta, gamma and X-rays. (Miller notes that Hereford cows 'in the immediate vicinity of the Trinity site were losing their hair.')

Strontium-90 wasn't all that was pooled in the bone. Jenkins noted elsewhere: "Some contaminants, such as plutonium with its effective half-life in the bones of 400 years, become practically permanent sources of ionizing radiation within the body itself."

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/nokonuketest.php

Iodine-131 has half-life of 8.02 days, so it falls into the category of a short-lived gas. Other short-lived gases, such as most radioxenon and radiokrypton gases, pose a danger…137Cs and 90Sr.' So, the worker's whistle-blowing testimony was factual: an underground nuclear test leaked radioactive gases and the xenon 137, a gas that has a half-life of 3.9 minutes, decayed into Cesium-137; and the gas krypton 90, with a half-life of 33 seconds, decayed into strontium-90. The scientists concluded that 'The main mechanism of soil contamination of 137Cs and perhaps 90Sr (along with bomb test areas by the nuclear powers, but over years and …

They include tritium gas (half-life: 12.26 yrs), which occurs naturally in our atmosphere in small quantities but is also created when the rock makeup of underground nuclear test areas is rich in lithium and boron.

…the dishonorable distinction of inflicting the greatest long-term population dose of any of the gases produced by nuclear explosions because of its very long half-life of 5,730 years. It is present in our atmosphere in the form of 14CO2, or radioactive carbon dioxide. 'Ordinary' carbon dioxide is technically Carbon-12 Dioxide, or 12CO2.

Other long-lived gases that are continually seeping out into the air above the Nevada Test Site including krypton-85 (half-life of about 11 yrs) and argon-39 (half-life of 269 yrs).

…Helen Caldicott has noted that lacking any epidemiological studies (to substantiate or warrant CNN's claim) we must consider that xenon-133, which has a half-life of 5.25 days, perhaps even in minuscule amounts can cause harm. The same can be said for xenon-131, xenon-135, krypton-90, krypton-85, etc…

Here are some examples of the gaseous fission products spewed from nuclear reactors and leaked underground nuclear tests: Krypton-85 is a beta and gamma emitter that hangs around for 10.7 years. Krypton-87, with a half-life of 1.27 hours, decays through both beta decay (a neutron splits itself apart) but also neutron decay (it spits out a neutron particle) on its journey to stable Kr-86. That neutron can turn anything, like cells in your body, into radioactive isotopes! Since Krypton-87 has a half-life of 1.27 hours, for almost 24 hours it is floating around our communities, from reactor effluent, shooting neutrons into things converting them into radioactive versions. Krypton-88 is beta and gamma emitter with a 2.84 hour half-life, and decays into radioactive rubidium-88 (beta and gamma) and then stable strontium-88. Krypton 89, with a life-life of 3.15 minutes,…

The total yield of 137Cs would be the result of the full decay of its radioactive precursors, 137Te, 137I and 137Xe, which have a combined half-life of 261 seconds, or 4 minutes 21 seconds. If we consider that near full decay occurs at 10 half-lives, then the full cumulative yield (or quantity) of Cesium-137 occurs at about 43 minutes …

…international organization of the CTBT, elaborates on the laboratory difficulties - and possibilities - in 37Ar detection: 'This isotope has a considerably longer half-life than the CTBT- relevant radio-xenon isotopes, and would so be more likely to remain in detectable quantities during the time-frame of an OSI [on-site inspection]…

About 820,000 of the curies released at Millstone in 1975 consisted of xenon-133, which is a beta-emitter and has a half-life of 5.24 days.

…Similarly to 140Ba, 137Cs is a daughter of a noble gas produced in the fission event. The precursor of 137Cs is 137Xe (half-life: 3.82 m). The 137Xe released to the atmosphere decayed to 137Cs which was expected to be deposited on the ground (vegetation) near the exhaust" - Levels of radionuclides in plant radioactive gases can travel over significant territory over weeks and months while its gases take weeks or years to fully decay. For example, xenon-133 has a half-life of 5.25 days - it is radioactive for over 100 days - and Krypton 85 has a half-life of about 11 years and it is 'hot' for over 200 years.

One difference is half-life: strontium-89 has a half life of around 51 days and strontium 90 (also written as Sr90) has a 28.5 year half life.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/nuclearspace.php

Since Plutonium-238, which is highly dangerous to health when inhaled or ingested, has a half-life of about 90 years, RTG fuel cores in U.S. orbiting satellites still have about three-quarters of their original quantities of plutonium intact.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/1-5.php

The Cobalt-60, however, ends up in the slag (the steel product) and keeps on giving off penetrating radiation for over 10 times its half life of 5.27 years. Gamma rays can travel dozens of meters in air and through walls until stopped by lead or until they disperse to undetectable levels. Cobalt-60 is still in use in…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/10-3.php

If you can find an air pocket downwind from a a nuclear explosion in two weeks, it probably will contain more parts per million of one gas than parts per million of the other gas when compared to ordinary air. [Xenon-133 (half life of 5.2 days) was detected over Canada and tracked to North Korea's 2006 test (view: Xe-133 plume trajectory).] …decays into radioactive rubidium-88 (beta and gamma) and then stable strontium-88. Krypton 89, with a life-life of 3.15 minutes, is a beta emitter and decays into beta- and gamma-emitting rubidium-89 (half life of 15.2 minutes), a solid. Rubidium-89, after a few hours, converts fully into beta-emitting long-lived strontium-89.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/10-7.php

…
One difference is half-life: strontium-89 has a half life of around 51 days and strontium 90 (also written as Sr90) has a 28.5 year half life.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/11-4.php

… the stable isotopes of Kr-80, 82, 83, 84, and 86. Xenon-133 is the daughter of Iodine-133 (20.8 hour half life) …Interestingly, Kr-87 actually can also decay by beta emission - it actually 'prefers' this method 39 times out of 40 (the other 1 out of 40, or 2.3% of the time, is via neutron decay). Aftering emitting a beta particle, it turns into solid rubidium-87, which is also a beta-emitter with a half life of 4.7 BILLION years…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/1fissionchart.php

For instance, the half life of Iodine-131, which was created in enormous quantities by nuclear weapons testing in Nevada (and weapons production, for example in Washington State), is 8.02 days.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/fukushima.php

The article quotes one activist who said "It's hard to believe we're running that blind," -…'given that other radionuclides have been detected at much greater levels in milk, air and rainwater throughout the country, it is alarming that EPA is not testing for strontium more regularly...'
The article continues: 'Activists are in particular concerned about a lack of adequate strontium testing because it is considered to be one of the most dangerous radionuclides to be released during nuclear incidents due to its ability to accumulate in human bone. Like cesium, some forms of strontium also have a long half life, meaning the contamination will remain in the environment for decades.'

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/studies.php

…radioactive contamination from Nuclear Fallout. Cesium 137, a byproduct of Nuclear Fission was one of the nuclides deposited during this fallout period. Cesium 137 has a half life of 30 years and relatively high photon energy so it is easily detected and theoretically would still be present in the soil if it was…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/7-1.php
Snapshot was 'boosted' after its letdown performance into a higher orbit, at 1,300 kilometers above Earth, but experts expect it will come crashing into Earth's atmosphere in about 3,000 years, or sooner if it encounters collisions with other space objects. (Snapshot's uranium has a half life as long as the Earth is old.) A number of RTG-equipped (non-nuclear reactor powered) spacecraft in Earth orbit of U.S. origin will crash into Earth in a timeframe slightly less than Snapshot's.

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/a-1-2.php

The Cobalt-60, however, ends up in the slag (the steel product) and keeps on giving off penetrating radiation for over 10 times its half life of 5.27 years. Gamma rays can travel dozens of meters in air and through walls until stopped by lead or until they disperse to undetectable levels. Cobalt-60 is still in use in…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/hiroshimaday.php

…are clearly outlined by the author: 'Many would agree that considering radioactive particles' rate of decay, fallout could be an issue for generations- not just for survivors. Previously mentioned, Strontium-90, for example, has a half life of 28 years [and won't decay to safe levels for 200 or 300 years]....The areas most effected by fallout were Koi-Takasu and the Nishiyama Reservoir, an area only populated…

SNIPPET from NuclearCrimes.org/nuclearnews-3.php

…of the long-term impacts of other radiochemicals used: iridium-192 has a half-life of 74 days, a full 'life' of about 5 years. Silver 110m (which is a metastable isotope of silver-110) has a half life of 250 days, and will linger dangerously in the environment for 5,000 days. And that's not all. Many populated areas where natural gas is plentiful also have abundant (homeowner) radon gas problems…

The above sections are parts of webpages on NuclearCrimes.org containing the word strings 'curies,' 'half-life' and 'kilotons.'The bulk of the research on this former website (NuclearCrimes.org) was arranged in chapters (Chapters 1-15) in a draft book.
The URL strings above are numeric references to those chapters.